Refine
Document Type
- Article (3)
Language
- English (3)
Has Fulltext
- yes (3)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (3)
Keywords
- paper-based assessment (2)
- Behavior (1)
- Behavioral ecology (1)
- Community ecology (1)
- Ecological metrics (1)
- Psychology (1)
- Social psychology (1)
- Transportation (1)
- Verbal behavior (1)
- aging (1)
The behavioral sciences, including most of psychology, seek to explain and predict behavior with the help of theories and models that involve concepts (e.g., attitudes) that are subsequently translated into measures. Currently, some subdisciplines such as social psychology focus almost exclusively on measures that demand reflection or even introspection when administered to persons. We argue that such a focus hinders progress in explaining behavior. One major reason is that such an exclusive focus on reflections results in common method bias, which then produces spurious relations, or in other words, low discriminant validity. Without the valid measurement of theoretical concepts, theoretical assumptions cannot be tested, and hence, theory development will be hampered. We argue that the use of a greater variety of methods would reduce these problems and would in turn foster theory building. Using a representative sample of N = 472 participants (age: M = 51.0, SD = 17.7; 54% female), we compared the validity of a classical introspective attitude measure (i.e., the New Ecological Paradigm) with that of an alternative attitude measure (i.e., the General Ecological Behavior scale). The latter measure, which was based on self-reported behavior, showed substantially better validity that we argue could aid theory development.
The effects of aging on response time were examined in a paper-based lexical-decision experiment with younger (age 18–36) and older (age 64–75) adults, applying Ratcliff’s diffusion model. Using digital pens allowed the paper-based assessment of response times for single items. Age differences previously reported by Ratcliff and colleagues in computer-based experiments were partly replicated: older adults responded more conservatively than younger adults and showed a slowing of their nondecision components of RT by 53 ms. The rates of evidence accumulation (drift rate) showed no age-related differences. Participants with a higher score in a vocabulary test also had higher drift rates. The experiment demonstrates the possibility to use formal processing models with paper-based tests.
In this paper, we developed a method to extract item-level response times from log data that are available in computer-based assessments (CBA) and paper-based assessments (PBA) with digital pens. Based on response times that were extracted using only time differences between responses, we used the bivariate generalized linear IRT model framework (B-GLIRT, [1]) to investigate response times as indicators for response processes. A parameterization that includes an interaction between the latent speed factor and the latent ability factor in the cross-relation function was found to fit the data best in CBA and PBA. Data were collected with a within-subject design in a national add-on study to PISA 2012 administering two clusters of PISA 2009 reading units. After investigating the invariance of the measurement models for ability and speed between boys and girls, we found the expected gender effect in reading ability to coincide with a gender effect in speed in CBA. Taking this result as indication for the validity of the time measures extracted from time differences between responses, we analyzed the PBA data and found the same gender effects for ability and speed. Analyzing PBA and CBA data together we identified the ability mode effect as the latent difference between reading measured in CBA and PBA. Similar to the gender effect the mode effect in ability was observed together with a difference in the latent speed between modes. However, while the relationship between speed and ability is identical for boys and girls we found hints for mode differences in the estimated parameters of the cross-relation function used in the B-GLIRT model.